Letter: Obamacare criticism is worse than VA scandal

Posted: July 14, 2014 - 5:43pm

The editorial Obamacare hits home (Editorial: Obamacare hits home, June 25, amarillo.com) could best be described by quoting what retired Chief Justice Warren Burger said during an interview concerning the Second Amendment: It “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat fraud — on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

In this case, it is against health care for millions of Americans.

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a hard-right think tank closely tied to Koch Bros., ALEC, State Policy Network, etc.

People for the American way describe the M.I. agenda as “privatization of sanitation services, infrastructure maintenance, deregulation in the area of environmental and consumer protection, school vouchers, and cuts in spending on social welfare programs.”

The reason for existence of the “think tank” is to serve the purposes of special interest groups. They are told the answer to a problem, and the “think tank” manipulates the facts or invents them to support the predetermined result.

The Department of Health and Human Services, in a June 11 survey covering 36 states with which the federal government is operating health insurance exchanges, indicated the silver plans (the most popular) had average monthly premiums of $69, after tax credits. About half who bought insurance paid about $50 per month after tax credits. The survey also showed that 60 percent who bought insurance were previously uninsured. The CBO said that 12 million non-elderly people will have insurance, thanks to the ACA. The CBO also that the ACA would reduce the deficit — not increase it.

None of the insurance horror stories, usually sponsored by Koch, has survived scrutiny. Surveys by Rand Corporation, Gallup and Urban show net gains of about 9 million Americans with insurance from September 2013 to March 2014. This Manhattan Institute “study” does not pass the smell test.

Health Economist Jonathan Gruber recently commented that states that refuse to extend medicaid coverage “are willing to sacrifice billions of dollars of injection into their economy in order to punish poor people. It really is just almost awesome in its evilness.”

It is projected that from 7,000 to 17,000 will die each year due to no insurance in red states that do not extend Medicaid.